New year is a time for reflection isn’t it? I’ve reflected a long way back! One of the things I did when I first started Reason Why in 2012 was to write a series of blogs, almost a manifesto, of how I felt the topics that cross my desk are connected.
Those topics being engagement, culture, employer value proposition, internal communication, employer brand, and to a less direct extent, purpose and performance.
It made for an interesting read. Some has held up well, on some of it my thinking has evolved. My quirky/irritating writing style remains the same. That I had to abandon my attempt to give every post a Buzzcocks song title (or just forgot maybe?) made me chuckle.
Let me see if I can paraphrase the narrative arc:
All of these topics contribute to better organisational performance and can have a powerful impact. But you need to be certain that you are enabling people to do things quicker, better, cheaper - or you're actually just a distraction, and distractions get in the way of performance.
Performance can only happen when employees and customers* have a shared understanding. Without the employee working for the customer, you cannot succeed.
*I'm using “customer” for any kind of end-user/person you serve, not just a transactional paying customer
To enable the employee to work for the customer, they need to really understand:
· Your Purpose - Why you do what you do
· Your Culture - How you do what you do
Purpose is usually – at least in the terms of What We Need to Do and Why that is important - is usually easier to grasp, and to keep current. Or at least in the day-to-day. What might be missing is what all those days add up to. Culture may not be as well-defined, or it may vary in different areas of the organisation, or it may be different when the pressure is on, or there may not be effective guardrails or consequences for counter-cultural activity.
A key way for the right culture to be better shared and understood is by having effective employee engagement. The argument here is that engagement is about knowing how to make the right decisions. That is decisions that fit:
· the needs and culture of the organisation (and by extension the customer)
· the needs and beliefs of the individual
If the decisions you're required to make create any kind of conflict here, then someone fails, either the organisation or the individual. You're either doing the wrong thing for your employer or you – and neither of those is sustainable.
Understanding the right kinds of decisions then needs better communication. But organisations often suffer from a deficit or surfeit of information – and often both at the same time. It's very hard to provide the sweet spot. The people best-placed to facilitate hitting the sweet spot are line managers. But they are also the worst-placed because of the other demands on them, and because they very often lack the comms and people skills required. And even if they have the time and the capabilities, they may lack the right information themselves.
Those communications can't be 100% what we, the employer, need from you, the employee. They can be to a large extent; we are all getting paid to go to work after all. But they need, as well, to draw on the elements that give people the intrinsic rewards that make doing work more worthwhile. The classic drivers of engagement, the meaningful (alongside the monetary) reward of doing this role here, and doing it well.
You can only find out what those drivers of engagement in your organisation really are by a discovery programme that goes beyond numbers and gets into how people really feel.
Conducting that kind of exercise gives you insights into your communication, into your culture. It shows up what is great and can be celebrated now - your EVP that can be shared in your employer branding. But that should also be about understanding your target audience.
Because when you know where your internal strengths align with what the market demands, you can tailor how you appeal to them.
And when you also know where what you offer now doesn't align with either what your current or future employees want - then you have a direction to enable you to enhance your EVP, and therefore engagement, and ultimately delivery to customers.
There is a connection between all of these elements, and done right, they all lead back to success.
That’s what I wrote in 2012. I wouldn’t totally disagree with any of it. But what have I learned in the meantime?
1) There’s a bit in there about engagement being about decision-making, which I don’t think I’d lean into much these days. I think making the right decisions, and it being easy to make the right decisions, is perhaps a good indicator for good engagement – but I don’t think I’d describe them as being analogous.
2) I asserted that Purpose is easier to grasp than Culture. Not so sure about that, I think Culture can be hard to express at times, but innately, most people feel it. Purpose – especially when organisations are needing to be more agile – perhaps can be more elusive. Why are we doing this – what’s it all for – I think that can be just as hard to pin down. That’s a huge risk and challenge to leaders.
3) What, as I reflect, I haven’t included enough of is the employee voice, not just in highlighting or “diagnosing” issues – but in starting to solve them too. That’s become an increasingly important part of my work. As the pace of change increases, sometimes only the shopfloor can see the next step. And given a forum to develop that, they can and will.
4) But I think what’s changed most in my thinking is moving away from seeing this as a continuum where you need to have everything in place, or a need to approach things in a certain order. I think the reality is quite different, and actually for an organisation to have the headspace to think in that way would be really hard. It’s probably not realistic – one person may be able to hold that vision, but it to be shared more widely isn’t easy. It needs to be simpler, there needs to be – at any one time – a single point of focus.
I’ve worked with many organisations that face very similar challenges, but have either chosen to diagnose them, or to treat them, as to do with culture OR engagement OR employer value proposition. They’ve found the way in and the language that works for them, and pursued their challenges though that lens.
That has made for an interesting experience. It’s a different process to start the project, because you’re talking in quite different terms. What’s then interesting is that my first main interactions, the research and insights – especially when talking directly to employees – is often very similar. I’m looking to understand the connection between employer and employee, When I’m holding that conversation, the reason behind the research becomes less relevant, certainly to the participant. They know and feel what they know and feel, I don’t expect them to express t as related to culture or engagement or whatever.
The outputs may then be quite different – as you’d expect. Action plans to even better understand and improve employee experience after all look very different from ways in which you can active your EVP.
But they do all hold in common is that desire for better understanding and connection between employer and employee, and a will to improve upon that.
Which means that the ultimate results are often similar. And as I said in that very first blog, they have to be tied to performance, or what use are they?
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